Chef's new TV show a case of family Liaw

Adam Liaw has travelled across the globe to beam international cuisine to our TV screens.

But the celebrity chef says his latest show, nine-part series Destination Flavour Singapore airing on SBS on Thursday nights, is like apples and oranges when compared to the three before it.

"I think for Destination Flavour Down Under I travelled more than 40,000 kilometres and more than 25,000 of those was me, in a car, driving over land," Liaw told AAP.

"This one takes place within one city.

"There is a chance for a much deeper dive into the food culture and it looks back into the history of Singapore an awful lot more."

Liaw, 38, has been heading the show since 2012 after winning the second series of MasterChef in 2010.

The ever-smiling former lawyer has been welcomed to the Australian food scene with open arms, publishing four cookbooks and regular columns on simple, approachable Asian food while gathering more than 250,000 followers on social media.

His most recent offering, Destination Flavour Scandinavia, scooped up Best Lifestyle TV program at the AACTA Awards in December.

But with an English Singaporean mother and Hainanese Chinese father, Destination Singapore marks the first time Liaw has really turned the camera on himself.

The show explores his far-reaching heritage on the island including links to British colonial rubber plantations and his grandfather's internment in Changi prison during World War II.

"There's a huge amount of my personal history in there, possibly more than I would have liked to have shared," he said.

"But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

"It's not like I'm desperate to tell my family story on television, it's just that for this series ... it really did make a lot of sense."

Liaw said Singapore is similar to Australia in that it is a multicultural society with overseas influences, including Malay, Indian, Chinese and colonial, which ensure there is not one homogenous cuisine.

He said his family were among the wave of Hainanese Chinese to arrive in Singapore and Malaysia from the 1920s onwards.

"That's where you get dishes like Hainanese chicken rice, which most Singaporeans would consider to be their national dish," Liaw said.

He said the dish remains a family favourite "generations on" at home in Sydney, where he lives with his Japanese wife Asami and their young children, Christopher and Anna.

But Liaw's family might have to get used to seeing less of him, as the travel and television bug takes hold.

"There is a storytelling aspect of Destination Flavour that I really love," he said.

"Should we be lucky enough to do another one, I'd be very pleased to do that as well."